Diane Meyer

This is how I view it: a doctor violently killing a child with the mother’s consent.

We’ve all heard the sad and tragic stories. She can’t afford a child. She’s afraid she might abuse the child. She doesn’t want to lose her job. There is no father in the picture to help raise her child. She was raped.

But killing her child does not mean she is no longer a mother. It means she is a mother who has killed her child. How do you suppose she lives with that knowledge?

Abortion kills children and destroys women from the inside out. Before you shake your head or roll your eyes in denial, consider that our prisons and homeless shelters are filled with women who have chosen abortion, or had abortion chosen for them.

I know this because I work with them. I have held women as they spill out their deep shame and self-loathing for this choice they made. I have tried to comfort them as they share their hopelessness and despair; sure that God will punish and condemn them. I have listened and cried with them as they share how their decision to end the life of their child led to such despair and guilt that they have turned to drugs, alcohol, suicide attempts and other destructive behaviors, because nothing mattered anymore.

My understanding of these women and their anguish came to me at the cost of two of my own children through abortion. There was no dignity in their deaths and I have mourned their loss for years and will continue until the day I die. There was a time when I wanted the Lord to take my life because of this choice I made that ended the lives of my children. When I visit women in prison and the homeless shelter, sharing Jesus and encouraging those scarred by abortion, I can weep with them because I feel their sorrows as my own. Their tears are my tears and their heartache is my heartache.

How can it be good for our society to be filled with women who are weighted down with this burden?

My brothers and sisters in Christ, I implore you; do not look the other way while children are being killed in your neighborhood and you do nothing and say nothing because you believe there are other, more pressing issues. Don’t choose between standing up for and helping people who have been born and the youngest and most vulnerable of people, the pre-born. If being anti-abortion will not be as popular or progressive as being anti-sex-trafficking, have the courage and compassion to be both.

Abortion is much more than an opportunity for prolife Christians to throw fundraisers, have meetings and create programs. Abortion is the betrayal of women and one baby after another being violently killed. It is the death of millions of inconvenient but precious children. Doesn’t this break your heart? It breaks God’s heart because each human life is created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). Do not dismiss the entire prolife position and only embrace environmental issues, sex trafficking ministries and others that focus on what is trending now. Be supportive of them all. Speak highly of them. Bring attention to them. Don’t invalidate the prolife stand because you don’t like the politics of some prolifers. Don’t turn away from these children and their mothers. They are just as worthy of justice and protection as any others.

So please. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

I think Mother Teresa said it simply and said it best:

“Many people are concerned with children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is the greatest destroyer of peace today—abortion, which brings people to such blindness.”